Joe Rollino once lifted 475 pounds. He used neither his arms nor his legs but, reportedly, his teeth. With just one finger he raised up 635 pounds; with his back he moved 3,200. He bit down on quarters to bend them with his thumb.

Impressive. Most impressive.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., as Mr. Rollino was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at 13th Avenue, a 1999 Ford Windstar minivan struck him. The police said he suffered fractures to his pelvis, chest, ribs and face, as well as head trauma. Unconscious, he was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he later died.

New York is a city of extraordinary lives and events, and here, indisputably, was one of them — one of the city’s strongest and oldest, struck down on a Monday morning by a minivan in Brooklyn.

That is, in its way, as painfully ironic as the Sith being thwarted by Ewoks. Except the former really happened, while the latter was a Hollywood propaganda creation.

While it’s the case that the ability to bend a quarter with your fingers is insignificant when set against the power of the Force, I remain impressed what ordinary human beings can sometimes accomplish.

Vader the strongman